Remember Me
by LoStInTrAnZiT
Summary: Cloud didn't know you could take one short life time worth of memories and stretch them out to reach past an eternity. Kidaj didn't know how to remember. And neither of them knew the workings of a love story...Yet here they are.
1. Chapter 1

Final Fantasy-Last Stand

CHAPTER 1 - REMNANT OF TOMORROW

I think i want to be forgiven...more than anything/

''Cloud!'' The cries of excitement bounced from old pillar to new, their voices running together at the top of the crystal roof far above them. Cloud looked up at it, tried to squint through the ray's of intense sun shine, the brightest day he had ever seen. Or maybe the colours were merely strengthened when run through glass that checkered every tip of it's rainbow.

He felt his hand grabbed, impossibly small fingers just managing to curl around the width of his thumb and pinkie. He looked into the small child's eye's, a startling green he was not expecting, so large on his cherub face framed with curls of gold. He was a quiet boy, Cloud remembered his real name but would call him Hansel like everyone else. A name very fitting with the story of how he came to live with Cloud, one of many orphans who tried to follow the bread crumbs back home through a path destroyed by war.

A soft smile lightened Cloud from the inside out and the boy matched it, raising his arms as he was lifted and clutched against the black sponged jumper of Cloud's chest. He felt Hansel reach up through the spikes of white gold gathered on his head and beary his small fingers to the roots, something he seemed to do with everyone when being held, then used his other hand to stick his thumb into his mouth and curl around his nose. Cloud's hand, sprawled on his back from blade to blade so small was Hansel's body, made his way through the rest of the children dancing between the colours. Ribbons twirled behind some as they clutched fist fulls and raced, the quick tapping of little feet was as endless as the patter of rain and the laughter seemed to bubble up from their very soul's. It was beautiful to listen to, lost children smiling once again, truly happy at a new home it had taken Cloud months to build.

After the fighting had ended and the memories seemed to settle like dust around the city things had began to change. The people, no longer terrorised by the threat of a planet intent on reeking it's revenge had started to rise a new Shinra from the ashes of the old. Buildings slowly grew from ruins to the proud establishments they once were and the city was once again filled with the busy hustle of life. Everyone seemed to smile so much easier these day's as the relief hung like a living shawl just bellow the sky. Cloud, along with the help of all those who had fought beside him and sore first hand the sorry state the world had once been in had gathered at the crumbling remains of the church he had stayed in and turned it into something like a home. The skeleton of the church still resided but wholes were filled and extensions added until an orphanage with the beauty of a cathedral now stood before it's memory.

The children were always running down it's red carpeted halls, finger tips gliding along the massive frames of glass on every wall. Dozens of rooms littered every level and inside them each one was plastered with the touch of that child's happiness. Colourful sheet's on the bunk beds, bright pictures splashed with paint, cloths usually scattered amongst the furniture. Cloud was resigned to the fact that he was now these orphans guardians, hell he didn't really know how to be anything else besides the brooding delivery boy or the ex-soldier.

As he fought his way through the beaded curtain some of the children had made out of a jewelry kit found, into the living area that now consisted instead of broken pews and alters, yellow love seats and rainbow bean bags, he settled Hansel onto a cushion. The boy stretched forward and grabbed a discarded jigsaw puzzle, as was often his favored thing to do and began to tip the pieces out. Cloud watched him though his attention was more focused on the floor boards that creaked beneath his feet, underneath him sat the hollow spot. And underneath those boards he could still smell the fragrance of lily water, keeping the room sweet, a little pond flooding the forbidden basement bellow.

Cloud had not let them distory the original floor of the church, where the water from which the childen plagued by the Stigma had stepped into and been freed lay still around the tumbling pillars and debry. He wanted it there because the part of him that wanted to forget did not always agree with the part of him that wanted to remember. He hadn't been down there since they had rebuilt the church and the door to the bottom floor was always locked, the key making the dip of Cloud's chest hurt when it pressed into his skin.

Hansel appeared to sense the sudden change in atmosphere, blonde head dipping up to inspect the emotions on Cloud's face.

''They told me the battle was a hard one, they told me it nearly destroyed everything.''  
''You were to young to remember,'' Cloud confirmed. Hansel nodded, latched onto Cloud's sleeve and pulled him down until the man sat on his knee's. He pushed a piece of the puzzle into Cloud's hand, it felt smooth one side and rough on the other.

''Have you ever tried to complete the puzzle when you can't see the picture on the pieces?'' Hansel questioned. Cloud shook his head, pale eye brows furrowed as he clutched the cardboard between his fingers.

''It's really hard and the other side always looks so dull compared to the side the pictures on.''

With that said Hansel released him and ignored him long enough for Cloud to realize he was done with him. He made his way past the play room where they had come from, noted the children trying to blow up a plastic pool that seemed big enough to fit them all in. He froze as he made to move forward but collided with something else, too soft for a wall and too tall for a child.

''Tiffa,'' Cloud reached out and steadied her arms where the tray's of drinks balanced there seemed to totter before becoming still again. The girl really was beautiful when her pale skin was flushed from running around after dozens of children and her deep brown hair danced free around her shoulders. Instead of her usual black attire she wore a long dress patterned with flowers.

''Cloud,' she beamed,'how have you been?''

Cloud couldn't help but laugh,''we sore each other just this morning so i don't think much different from then.''

Tiffa laughed too, seeming to do the impossible as she piled the two tray's onto both arms and pushed a few stray hairs from her eyes. ''It seems like day's since this morning, i've been so busy with everything. I know i said i'd help you out Cloud but you really could do more than wondering from room to room all day and playing with the children.''

''Someone need's to keep them entertained,'' Cloud replied.

''And someone needs to feed them.''

''You go,' Cloud slipped a tray from Tiffa's arms and cradled it on his own,' you need to be at the bar.''

''I know,' she sighed,'but with Marlene worried over Densil i've been too tiered to open it.''

''Densil?''

''He's been having nightmares, nearly every night.''

Cloud faltered, his own blue eye's un-focusing as he ran over his own tormented dreams. Tiffa recognised the beginning of one of his many brooding moments and laughed light enough to expel the tension.

''After everything he's seen Cloud don't you think he's going to have nightmares?''

''I guess,'' Cloud muttered, now somewhere distant. He felt Tiffa's hand on his shoulder and heard her words, as faded as the light coming through the window as she disappeared down the hall.

''All of us have nightmares Cloud, even the bad guys.''

Plenty of things broke. You could brake a vase, a curfew, a law, break the ice, the seal on a bottle. You could break a snail's shell, bones and rhythm. Kadaj made a list of all these things in his head as he fell.

In fragments he wondered, wondered where the soft threads of the after life had gone from it's grasp around his soul, wondered who was letting him fall like this, endlessly through a darkness that felt familiar with it's torture. Made a list as long as the breath in his lungs of all the things he had done to deem this punishment fair. To all those he had killed and taken from, this would seem just.

And as he dared to open his eyes, the moment he realized he had eye's again he felt his body plummet into something hard and solid. Something that broke his fall before giving way with a sharp crack and clatter. Then a small drop again, nothing like the endless decent he had just traveled and then a splash. Water can brake, Floor's can brake. A touchable tide took over at last but before the sight he'd newly required could fade completely Kadaj focused his vision. Everything moved like the black waves of a dream, a sea shadowed by bottomless nightmares. And just as Kidaj surrendered himself to this new, deadlier Life Stream he realized hearts could break too.

When Cloud heared the screams of a dozen children break out all at once by now he was so used to peace he thought of a big black spider in the bath tub, toast left in the toaster so long it had burst into flames (again), he thought at worst of one of the children having fallen over and cracked their head open or something as equally traumatizing.

So as he lifted himself from the crouched position he had taken up in order to get a closer look at the hole in the garden wall, a hole made by one of the children who had consequently figured out how to make small explosives with the chemicals under the kitchen sink, he did not expect little blonde Hansel to come careening right into him. Cloud had never seen the child stand on his own two feet for more than five minutes, let alone run. And the boy looked whiter than usual, pale with fear as he burrowed his head deeper into Cloud's legs.

''I heared screams?'' Cloud lifted his eye's to stare in through the back door of the orphanage, scanning for smoke or flooding. The building looked fine so what was going on?

''An angel fell through the ceiling,'' a muffled reply came from the squirming child. Cloud, believing he had heard wrong lifted Hansel from underneath the arms until he was hovering in the air, face to face.

''I'm sorry i didn't catch that,'' the natural soft tones of Cloud's voice soothed the boy enough to calm him into talking. Though he seemed reluctant, staring straight into Cloud's eye's for a few minutes as if weighing up the idea of sharing his secret.

''An angel fell through the ceiling then went though the floor, my puzzle fell down the whole. I didn't know there was water down there.''

Cloud froze, his grip on the small boy weakening enough until he had lowered Hansel to the ground. The small child began twirling a curl of gold hair around his finger before staring up at his carers stricken face.  
''Cloud, can angel's drown?''

And Cloud was running, up the garden steps warmed by a lazy sun and through the wide kitchen where his feet echoed of the tiles. He wasn't quit sure what Hansel had meant but assuming he had mistaken an angel for a person who had fallen through the floor he could imagine the scene. One of the orphans thundering around in their room, the floorboards giving way, maybe even booby trapped by one of the more mischievous kids and said child falling straight through the ceiling, into the lounge with enough force to keep falling straight through to the ruin bellow.

He tried to remember who lived in the room above the play area, a little girl wasn't it. He imagined her thrashing around, terrified in the pitch black rain water, left there as a serious hazard all because Cloud couldn't get over his memories.

He burst into the colourful expanse of the room, could tell where the hole was by the flock orphans gathered around the splintered floor, given way to a depthless drop.

''Get back,'' He panted, pulling them away from the edge of broken wood before leaning into the darkness.

''Are you ok, are you hurt?'' He yelled, listening to his own voice echo back. The panic curled, cold and tight at the base of his spine when the only reply he reseved was the gentle lapping of rippling water.

Turning on his feet and tearing the chain from around his throat so the key to the basement could slide into his palm he glanced at the children.  
''Did you see who fell in?' they shook their heads, wide eye's un-able to un-latch themselfs from the gaping hole,'ok, stay here and don't go near the drop. I'm gonna find out who's down there.''

Without breaking his pace Cloud snatched up a stray torch from behind a bean bag and darted back into the garden once more. He ran around the side of the house, coming to a grey door in the side of the wall partly hidden by the mass of a rose bush left to grow wild. Ignoring the thorns that dug into the muscle of his bare arms Cloud pushed the key into the door, bolting into the darkness once it swung open. He pulled a cord to light his descent down the concrete steps, a light that faded into a dim outline once he came into the clearing of the original church. The torches light barely penitrated the darkness

His boots had already hit water, seeping into the rubber of his shouls and Cloud took a second to pause as memories swarmed at his sences. He couldn't hear anyone struggling to stay afloat which was eather bad or good. Depending weather the person had dropped into the deepest part of where the small pool collected and been to injured to keep afloat or if they had landed and managed to claw their way into the shallows.

Cloud could barely see as he waded forward, only the odd outline of broken shards where windows once were and the end of a drowning bench. He waded up to his knee's, black combats sticking un-comfortably close to his legs. Cloud edged in further to his chest, tasting the dampness of un-stired air and the fresh scent of his own fear.

''Hello, is anyone there. Are you badly injured, make any sound you can if you can't talk,'' he yelled into the darkness, pausing to wait for any sign of life. When nothing but silences greeted him back Cloud turned to wade to where the first row of seats once were, noticing a circle of light reflecting against the water from where the jagged floor boards had given in. He looked up above and sighed as a dozen young faces, bright with excitement peaked around the whole.

''I told you guys to stay away from the edge,'' Cloud frowned, skaing his head when a throng of voices came down at him, all passing the blame onto the other.

''Charlotte said we should watch in case you needed our help.''

''Hansel asked if i could try and spot his puzzle down there.''

''Marien told me to do it.''

''Ok, ok just get back. If the floor boards give way now your all going to get wet-''

Cloud noticed the atmosphere change and the eager faces of the orphans shift from eyeing him to staring, awe struck at the water in front of him. The silence was eerie as Cloud looked down...and felt all the rules he had gathered about life drift away on the black waves around him.

He could see the beginning of skin as white as rice paper rise towards him, alien in it's beauty yet terrifying in the stillness of it's arrival. Eye's shut, skin swelling with water absorption, a dead facade on a ghost. He was a ghost. Cloud had watched him die, watched the Life Stream carry him away.

Without realizing he had began to move or knowing how to stop himself once he was aware of his arms reaching down, Cloud lifted the dead weight into his arms and pulled him out the water. If he was a ghost then why was he now cradling the lifeless body of Kidaj, Sethirophs remnant, so very real and solid against his thundering chest.

Cloud's thoughts stumbled over themselves as each passing minute seemed to prove the authenticity of the situation. From the way the water ran of Kidaj's lilly white skin as if his whole body were crying river's to the soaked silk of silver hair plastered to the side of Cloud's forearm. No dream could be etched this deep with detail and no memory of his would ever manifest itself into this.

Taking a breath he almost choked over Cloud tried to ignore the feel of too many eye's recording his every move and slowly lowered his head down to Kidaj's chest. He only paused for a second, to recognise the feeling of utter bewilderment that came with miracles before pressing his ear to the naked chest of his former enemy. Inside of him had been Sephiroth, inside of him was a heart beat strong and damp as a rabbit's and Cloud reeled back on a gasp.

Last time he had craddled this body to him, felt every curve and pulse was just before the planet's essence had wraped Kidaj in it's shore and carried him into it's heart, so selfishly, so selflessly. Now Cloud held the naked, whippet build of Kidaj as he had been reborn. And just like a new born he parted lips that were almost tinted blue with the ice of the water and wailed a sound of true dispair. A sound of the broken.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2- SOFT AS SILENCE

The Life Stream. That's what we call the River Of Life that circles our planet, giving life to the world and everything in it/

The dream in front of him was a sequal of images that un-raveled like the ribbon of a road. No matter how fast he tried to run through one scene there was always another one right beneath his feet, he couldn't manage to catch up to it's end.

Kidaj woke surronded by a comfort he had never felt before, in the padding of a bed that smelt like apples and forrest air with a warmth seeping straight into his bones. Everything hurt, so much so he barely noticed the room around him or the familiar scent in the air. Pain seemed to keep him stitched together in every thread of skin, without it Kadaj would describe it as a feeling like floating on your back. Though he never knew that there was an edge just waiting for him to go falling over.

And look where he had landed, he knew this place, knew where he was as soon as he had broke through the atmosphire before loosing his head beneath the water. But he couldn't remember where he had lost his way, where on planet Earth he was. Also something was missing, a part of himself that left him wondering who he was, why he was here. What was the purpose of all this?

Shifting his weight Kadaj called out the only names laying heavy in his chest because from now on he looked to be living purely on instinct-

''Loz?...Yazoo?''

...That's right he was alive, alive and alone. As Kadaj tried to clear his throat that seemed to have closed over at some point between life and death he lifted a hand, shaking violently with weakness and pressed it against the bare skin of his chest. He didn't have to wait long before a steady thump ran through the nails on his fingers, a pulse fast and furious. The way all remnants hearts beat, with the pace of a sparrows wing.

His vision blurred slightly before clearing, burning at the edges as he tried to see past the foot of the bed. It sat in a wooden frame, Kadaj could smell the pine and make out each individual fibre of the engrains. Because in reality Kadaj's eye sight was like that of an averga human but he was use to his advanced abilities, he had known nothing else. He didn't perticualy realize or care that others could not see in perfect detail 2 miles ahead of them, that they could not see in the dark, that they could not move at the speed of a storm and harbour a strength outlandishly impossible considering Kidaj's small frame.

He wanted his powers back and he was going to demand as such, as soon as his brother's returned. They couldn't be very far, since the moment Kidaj was made his brother's had been there. A deep connection that allowed them to latch onto one another's soul lengths from the very word go. So they had to be, maybe when he had fell he'd landed in a place where he was found almost ammediatly, where as Yazoo and Loz where still lying around somwhere.

Something caught Kidaj's eye amidtst his ever circling thoughts and he rubbed at his vibrant green orbs to try and see what hung on the wall opposite. A picture. There was children, a whole flock of them it seemed, huddled around one young man outside a vast building. Kidaj narrowed his eye's at the man's face, the sun bathing him in a rich stream of gold from deep yellow spikes to dark black combats.

Kidaj stiftened as a memory shot hot and fast through his mind, lighting a trail of fire behind his eye's.

' Together we'll go....Together we'll play'

Kidaj and his brothers had killed him, their big brother. That was there brother wasn't it?

'Cloud, the hero,' a voice as smooth as silk twisted in between the thought and Kidaj found himself physicaly reeling away from something un-curling inside of him. In his vigar to escape whatever had spoken in the depths of his head and the flash backs striking him with it's intensity Kidaj's body became tangled in the sheet's of the bed, twisting and turning right of the end and onto the hard floor.

Kidaj whinced, sprawled on his back that remembered the harsh contact with the wooden boards beneath him. The low thud his body made seemed to echo before turning into a hurd of what sounded like thunder. Kidaj had managed to crawl onto his knee's, blankets puddled around his lap, which he noted was clothless before the door to the room nearly burst of it's hinges.

Kidaj jumped despite himself, one hand fisted in spidery strands of silver hair, clutching the side of his head in a pain that flashed bright across the planes of his face. He looked up from silver lashes and strands, head still tucked as he kneeled. Though he was obviously as weak as a new born child Kidaj still managed to twist his lips into a inocent little smile as his hand reached towards the body in the door way.

''Brother...''

Cloud thanked god as Tiffa picked up on the third ring that she, nore any other of his friends were not like him. They answered the phone when one of their names flashed up on the screen as apposed to himself that simply acnoledged their call and slipped the silver phone back into his pocket. Cloud had never fell out of the habit but now he had a feeling he would think twise before ignoring a call again. Especialy one made by one of his fellow fighters who seemed most suseptable to have a miracle come falling from the sky and straight into their laps.

''Cloud?'' Tiffa had a right to sound startled, he had never phoned her in all the years they had known one another.

''Tiffa, have you opened the bar yet,'' he tried to swallow the impasience that always rose up in him when paniced.

''No, Densil wasn't feeling so good so i stayed home just in case...''

''Good, you have to come here-now. Something...something un-believable happened.''

''But Densil-''

''Bring him with you,' Cloud erged, shifting to press flat against the wall as more children came thundering past him. They had all gone slightly mad in their exsitment over 'the fallen angel.'

''Tiffa please...i need you.''

And the funniest thing was he did. For the longest time people had been the one telling Cloud how much they depended on him, how they needed him to protect them. Yet with no one there to protect him, a mother, a family he had become sick of the hero role. He wasn't fit to save anyone when he couldn't even save himself.

Just as he had prayed someone would answer his call with the phone clutched tight in his hand Cloud also realized just how desperate the feeling could be, a stone in your stumach when you were at the mercy of someone else's strength.

So he almost hugged Tiffa when she came rushing into the orphanage five minutes later, a pasty and irritated Densil trailing behind her. Tiffa's face was pinched with worry as she swept Cloud up in a stream of long dark hair and soft perfume.

''What happened?''

''Where's Marlene?''

They both questioned one another.

''Marlene's still at school, Cloud what's going on,'' Tiffa erged, taking him by the shoulders and resisting the need to shake that intense distance from his eye's. She had waited so long to get Cloud back, not the man that had stood before her but inside was really a million miles away. He was just starting to turn back to his old self and loosing him once more was not an option.

''It's Kidaj,'' was all Cloud uttered, enough to light the fuse of memories that still burned. Densil stiffened by Tiffa's side, already so much older than he had been when the battles had started. Now the boy was turning into the skeleton of a man, round face thinning as his jaw line defined, the transition from child to teenager slipping beneath his skin like a dream. But like them all, the grey steel of his eye's were aged beyound his years and in them now he sore an un-forgiving hate, one that still reduced Tiffa to tears whenever she sore it.

''Cloud, that's....,'' Tiffa's heavy lashes fluttered as she tried to blink away the wrong words that came to mind. Cloud could see them on the bow shaped curve of her lips...That's- wrong, sick, terrifying, mystifying...

''That's impossible,'' she eventually settled with, casting a glance at the tight fists Densil had balled his hands into.

''He came through the ceiling Tiffa, the kids sore it, i dragged him out from the water,'' Cloud hated every word he added, a nail staking their well earned peace and solidifying it as a mask of greif on their faces,''he's up stairs, sleeping it of.''

Tiffa's expression flat lined until not a single emotion passed there and Densil seemed to be feeling for all of them. He slammed the side of his fist into the wall, enough to startle them out of there own minds.

''That's bullshit,'' he spat, button nose scrunched with discust.

''Densil!'' Tiffa gasped, falling to her knee's beside him and hooking an arm around his shoulder. The moment came where the boy stared up at Cloud, still hovering and un-decided if any of this were actualy real. There had to be a point where he would wake up. But the faces of the one's he loved looking up at him and to him once again were as real as the boy up stairs in his bed. A boy with the soul of Sephiroth at his core, a boy with the power to distroy them all as he had once almost acomplished. A boy that called him brother though they were un-related and mostly strangers.

''What do we do?'' Tiffa asked, holding onto Densil as if he might float away. The boy was looking paler by the second, skin covered in a sticky film of sweat. Cloud felt himself shake his head, turn his back on the only family he had to stare out the wide window into the garden.

''I don't know,'' was his reply, barely audable above the sound of children who had only just discovered what it meant to be free.

Cloud watched Tiffa as she tilted her head up while trying not to fall down the whole to the water bellow. You could see clear through four flight's straight to a sky as misted and blue as a marble.

''First we've got to fix the damage before it rains, i'll call Reno and Rude. They still owe us,'' Tiffa's voice flagged poorly around her attempt to joke.

''I think the roof is the least of our problems at the moment,'' Cloud muttered, eye's flickering to Densil who had warn himself out with his own rage. It was clear the boy was ill, Cloud only hoped it wasn't anything as poisenous as the Stigma. Tiffa sat down at the edge of the sofa he was sprawled on, body flushed with fever and eye lids closed in sleep. They fluttered when she ran her long fingers through the waves of mohogany hair.

Cloud wandered into the kitchen, where a pot of noodles sat simmering on the stove. It was the first thing he had done in aknoleging that Kidaj did indeed exsist after laying him down to rest in his bed. Tiffa left Densil's side to folllow him.

''We need to think of something Cloud, before we tell the others.''

''Your going to tell them?'' Cloud stared into the bubbles of water misted by the starch of the pasta.

''We have to Cloud, we can't keep something like this from them,'' Tiffa cried. Cloud's shoulders bunched under the loss of what to do.

''They'll kill him,'' he whispered, the faded baby blue of his eye's deepening to a shade of grey.

''Maybe that's the only thing we can do,'' she muttered, sadness washing her voice into a faded silence.

''So that's what we're going to do, just let him die,' Cloud snaped, flinging himself around to show Tiffa the strain in his anger,'we're going to kill a man, no a child! Just because we're scared.''

''It's not just about being scared Cloud, you've seen what Kadaj can do-what he's capable of. If he were just a child there wouldn't be a need to but he isn't...He's a weapon.''

''As am i,'' Cloud countered, gaze turning hard. His words wraped around Tiffa and froze her, sweet, caring Tiffa who he couldn't quit look at, at the moment.

''I called you here because i thought you would help, you would want to but if all you want to do is start a witch hunt then you can go.''

Tiffa stepped back as if she had been dilevered a phsyical blow, chocolate eye's heavy with anger.

''Do you really want help with this Cloud or are you just scared to be left alone with him?''

Cloud's grip was tight on the handel of the pan as he poared the noodles into a bowl. No, what he really wanted was to know why Kadaj was here now, why he had landed bang in the middle of Cloud's world like the silent threat that always hovered. He wanted to know why the aspect of killing Kadaj made him feel like he had swallowed a pad of sand paper that grated against his insides everytime he took a breath. He wanted to know why watching Kadaj get taken away by the life stream and feeling releif made him feel less guilty than having him alive up stairs and un-able to fathom in himself everyone's loathing.

He wanted to hate Kadaj like everyone else, he wanted to say with surtainty that he had the strength to beat him again if need be, he wanted to be able to tell Tiffa it would be ok and know it was hundred percent the truth.

''What about Densil...Marlene. What about us Cloud?'' Tiffa's voice was small.

''I'm not choosing Tiffa,'' Cloud sighed, suddenly exausted as he picked up the bowl of noodles and made his way to the stairs.

''But....you just did.''

Cloud made it onto the landing before he heared the muffled thud of something heavy meeting the floor. Clutching tighter to the bowl he darted up the rest of the stairs, forgetting to slow down as he burst through the door, almost stumbling as it bounced back against the wall and hit him in the shoulder.

Kadaj looked too alien to belong to Earth, something you could spot at a distance and stare at long and hard yet still do a double take. He knelt in the middle of the room, tangled in a chain of blankets that only just managed to keep him modest. He looked so small, a creature all of his own speciese. Maybe that is why he and his brothers were so close. How alone it must feel to be droped into a world where you are the only one of your kind.

Cloud figured, in Kadaj's eye's that crackled a milky blue with a hint of jade, that was why he sore a silent recognision. And then he was un-consiouse in mid air, falling towards the carpet as thin spikes of silver hair trailed after him like smoke before settling around his head. Cloud dropped the bowl on a side cabnet filled with his jumpers and combats to kneel beside the small body.

And as Cloud cupped a thick shoulder to pull him up then sliped his arm beneath a narrow waste to lift him he realized with a dead weight in his heart that Kadaj was beautiful. When he wasn't drawing blood with tooth and nail in a battle that threatened humanity, when his face wasn't distorted and shimmering with the memory of Sephiroth he really was.

It was a beauty that drew you in, one that called to man, women, child or elder with a silent force that startled him. Cloud wondered if Kadaj knew what he looked like, if he considered anything beautiful. Except the reunion of his mother.

Among the white sheets of Cloud's bed with the blankets settled back around him it was suddenly too easy to believe Kadaj was real. In the way his chest, flat apart from the rise of muscle and bones lifted and dropped with breath and in the suttle scent of something crystalized eminating from his skin, these were all details Cloud could not get past.

He realized he was staring like an awe struck child, as if seeing the remnant for the first time but he supposed that was what it felt like. Where Kadaj had been sure something was missing Cloud was positive something had been found.

When he ventured back down stairs, now more sure and grounded than he had felt since staring into the hole in the floor Marlene was perched by Densil on the sofa and Tiffa was silent in her ditermination. Cloud hovered in the door way, took in the way Marlene had grown yet again from the length of her legs to the brown plate of hair falling down her back. She smiled brighter than anyone he knew, always managing to soften the things inside of himself that usualy felt too hard to move. She ran to him and he lay his hand on top of her head, tugging at the pink bow in her hair playfuly as she eclipsed his knee's in a hug. Cloud's own anwering smile faultered as Tiffa lifted herself and marched past him.

''You seem to have made your mind up so i'll let you tell the children,'' she tossed behind her shoulder.

''Tiffa's mad at you,'' Marlene craned her head around Cloud's thigh as they watched her stalk down the hall.

''Why is there a hole in the floor Cloud?''

Cloud sighed weaily, really it was as if him and Tiffa were married on occasions but he figured they might as well be. They were always together at one point or another and Cloud sore the children as his own but then there was the down side to it. The arguments that left him feeling ten times his age and the exptant faces of the kids as Tiffa made him realize the many realities of his disitions, that his choices would affect them as well. He looked into the glittering gaze of Marlene's admoration, trying to figure out a way to tell her he was going to put them at risk.

''The man, you remember the one with his two brothers that tried to hurt Cloud? Turns out the Life Stream doesn't want him either,'' a voice grouched from the sofa, causing Marlene's eye's to bead in fear.

That was until Densil had done it for him. 


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3- AND IT WAS BLACK

Kadaj couldn't remember if he had dreamt before...before he had died and that first dream after his first breath, he had thought it was all real. Just like the one he was currently running through.

There was no sence in a nightmare, no gravity or line to keep us teathered to the ground of reality. The details were too watered down to be anything close to real but Kadaj didn't notice. Didn't realize that the ground beneath his feet felt as soft as sponge yet looked like desert land or that the sky wasn't suppose to be a reflection of the Earth when he looked up at it. He simply skimmed over the mirrors between the clouds and the feeling of hovering outside of his own body as he looked down at himself. Yet the thundering noise of something coming at him was un-missable, the way it rolled over the padded valleys and grew in the shadows until he was sure the planet was once again breaking in two.

In the distance a black silloutte, shiney and wide was driving towards him at the speed of a slow motion bullet. Kadaj knew it was going fast but at the same time the dread inside of him had slowed everything down to a groan.

It rumbled so loud his ears were ringing in protest and he stumbled back, legs toppling on a ground that bent beneath his boots. But before Kadaj thought as far ahead as running he spotted a streak of gold on top of that large dark shadow now mere meters away. It was Cloud, he realized, ridding on top of something so frightining and suddenly it was shaping into a motorbike underneath his brother's body.

And Kadaj almost smiled, his eye's alight with something un-explainable until it looked as if a star were lodged in his throat. And he waited for Cloud to slow down....Yet he never did. Cloud, a face hidden behind the silver tint of air goggles and butter cup spikes that fluttered wildly around his head aimed the storming beast he rode on, right at Kadaj and then drew his sword.

It was just as big as Kadaj remembered, too big in the small hands of his brother who had lifted himself of the seat, the weapon, solid at his side as he kept his fingers tight around the handle bar. Kadaj didn't move, brain still sluggishly trying to sift through the scenes in his mind. Somewhere between Cloud ridding up to him and Cloud drawing his sword something refused to compute.

And then the chance to move was gone and for the second time Kadaj felt Cloud's sword brake through leather and slip under the curved fingers of his ribs. He felt the puncture like a brute force that knocked him from the inside and then from the out. A sharp tip tore through the muscle of his heart like a needle through skin, just shy of cutting him in half.

Then the ground was bowing around his body that had fell into it's arms at some point after he was struck. He imagined something as soft as a mother's kiss splitting open a seam in the sky and all the crystal blue of the world draining into the whole. The Earth getting tugged into it's pull, the whole of humanity dragged into a darkness and leaving him behind in a sea where the world had once been.

And the noise of that world ending was the simple sound of a spluttering engine as a bike drew further away.

Kadaj wanted to kill the idiot thats screams had woke him up before he realized, jaw locked open and eye's burning white, that he was the one who was screaming. He stopped as suddenly as he had started, shocked at himself since he had never done something like that before. And though his eye's were still heavy and his body still soft with warmthm, that old strength he had missed so dearly was now flooding his every cell. In a shock of images that had milky eye's darkening to a solid emerald he could see all the potential at the tips of his very fingers.

He could see bodies of the strongest crushed and broken beneath his feet, he could see the world going up in a burst of flames that sounded like a syclone lifting of the ground and he could see Cloud between it, standing and watching as everything burned.

As if the fire had been real Kadaj's skin broke out in beads of sticky sweat so he forced himself to clear the pictures in his mind, eye's darting around the room. It was a mess, cracks lining up the walls and dust falling from the splintered whole in the ceiling where his body had crashed through it. Kadaj looked for the picture on the wall and found it on the floor, glass shards littered around it and the wooden draws that had fallen on it's side, spilling the cloths inside.

The fear was that kind Kadaj had always liked, the kind that kept you from sobbing yet reduced you to tugging at your hair until your hands came away clutching chunks. It was the kind that pushed him to follow orders that he knew would get him killed, a single minded madness so much more comforting than the harsh emotions of pain.

With a small splutter of over joy and destructive intent Kadaj slid from beneath the covers, tossing his hands up into the air above him and stretching his fingers out for something to hold. His bones cracked with the streign as Kadaj moved towards the window, looking around wildly for that black bike that roared even now. But it was just a storm, rain that poared between the strikes of thunder and lightening that fell as close as lovers. He could smell the electricty in the air, the scent of the planet and every life force on her face. It was a jump start that brought him back to life more than being re-born every could, even more than death.

He clutched at the cloths that smelt like his brother, the cloths that felt like the ones Cloud had worn as he'd cradled him when he'd died all that time ago. The sharp bouts of his laughter crawled from wall to wall as Kadaj began to dress, the bolts rippling through the sky and bringing light to his skin where really all he sore was darkness.

CLOUD POV-

The first time i sore you i noticed your brother's first, coming at me as fast as they could on the bulk of their bikes, tearing up a desert sand that would of blistered my eye's if i hadn't been wearing my goggles. So i sore you in a dark tint behind glass, my eye throbbing from the bullet that your brother had aimed into my left socket. I looked up because they had driven away right when i thought i couldn't escape this and there you were, standing so high up on the edge of that cliff. A slight wind moved the tips of your hair that looked almost black to me, a shaded smirk curved those mocking lips of your's. Everything about you seemed drenched in darkness, maybe it was the leather or the way your eye's sore right through me the way His had but it made me look away.

I didn't know who you were, just one of the three in your gang that had attacked me and yet on my wanderings i found myself reminded of you. In the way the grey of the tree's curled around the shadows in the Forgotten City and the way a misplaced stone sat in the middle of it's river, the water not quiet able to dislodge it. The way i could not dislodge my own thoughts about you.

And then we were fighting and you were saying things i could never really understand. All i knew was your craving for the love as deep as a mother's and a child's, the way your eye's flashed topaz when something broke inside of you, the way your lips lifted in the smile of a child when you were dying and your pain was a mere memory.

I had never been called brother before but the term didn't really suit us, what we had, if anything at all, didn't feel brotherly and i blame all of it on Sephiroth. Still, even after he is dead he is distroying things. Could i of been your brother if it wasn't for him? Could i have been what you wanted me to be and in turn saved you, even if that meant killing you again?

I had just sat down after wandering past all the rooms of children sleeping inside, their soft breathing a comforting song in the air. That's when everything came crashing down the second time since your arrival. I heared a scream, a carnal sound that came from mother's giving birth and animals lashing out in pain. And as if that very cry of agony had crumbled the fixstures of the night things started to shift.

First it was in the air, an eletric pulse that usually came with standing beside the spot a lightning bolt had kissed and then it was in the walls, causing dust to fall and cracks that groaned to cast the orphanage into caos. Everything seemed to move, the ground falling away underneath us and i thought of earth quakes, of plates rubbing underneath the ground that were split open so deep you could see the begginings of hell. I thought of you.

Screams of a dozen children being torn away from their dreams and dropped into the middle of a nightmare clashed with the sound of the building moaning and the thunder somewhere far away. I ran up stairs that vibrated with a force i had never felt before, not even when the planet was angry enough to kill. I thought of how to get to all the children at once and then still manage to reach you. I thought of choosing while stood in my own loss of controll between the floors that led to you and them. If i was a hero wouldn't i be able to fly into everyroom, scooping you all up and delivering you to safe ground?

Then, as if something higher chose for me it all stopped and only when it did this did i release how tight my muscles had bunched beneath my skin with the straign of holding myself together. The energy faded from a sound like angry beeze to a distant hum, i felt it seep out my feet and through the floors and looked around with new eye's at a place that seemed clearer. The children had all sprinted from their rooms, finding me on the middle landing and trying to all beary their tear stained faces into my legs.

I touched as many heads with care as i could, telling them it was ok, just an earth quake, that they should all sleep together in the play room in case it happened again. And even as i said it i knew i was lying.

''I'll be there in minute, i have to check on Kadaj,'' i said and none of them questioned me about the guilt resting at the curve of my eye's.

When i opened the door to my room i expected you to be lying in my bed just the same as you had for two you'd been here, i expected you to be cowering in a corner like a child who thought there was a monster in their closet. I didn't expect what i sore, you stood in my cloths in the middle of the room. A black jumper that was tight on me but hanging of your shoulders and black combats that you'd straped to your narrow waist with the very last whole on my belt, your feet bare and startlingly pale against all the dark fabric. I couldn't see your face at first being as your head was hung low and that straight silver hair of yours was hanging in layers over your cheeks but you seemed so calm. I had to pause in the door because i had hoped the sudden out brake of distruction hadn't been you awakening at last but now i knew, as you stayed still and silent in the middle of everything you'd broken. Breifly i wondered if you'd done it by accident.

''Kadaj?'' My voice was soft, always soft even when i wanted to scream. Your head shot up, hair slung back and the bright jade of your eye's were the wildest i'd ever seen them. You'd alway's seemed out of controll in that way most teenagers were, as if you might go out and get drunk then try to swim up a river in the middle of the night or take a knife and carve a name into your arm just to watch yourself bleed around the imprint.

But this was different, it tasted like madness and it was painful to watch yet i couldn't look away. You didn't focus on me, it was as if you couldn't see me at all between the bright flashes of white in your eye's so i moved forward. At that moment a florecent streak of lightning darkened the room before aluminating everything inside of it and all of a sudden there was a diferent man stood before me.

Your hair was too long, almost to your ankles and three times as thick. Your body was too bulky, as if you had grown into the skin of a man right before my very eye's and then your gaze met my own and i stumbled back. Sharp green full of so many threats that tormented me in the silence, they called me a hero as i had called him a murderer. And i wondered around the block of ice in my veins how we could live in a world where one minute you were a lost kid with too much strength and then the next you had turned yourself into a monster such as Sephiroth.

I blinked and it was gone, you were you, looking right at me with eye's pale and faded once more. There was recognision there, a slight awe but maybe that had to do with the terrified mask my face had frozen into before i managed to shake myself out of it. And i was shaking, as much as you were.

''Kadaj,'' i swallowed around the name, stepping forward once more and it felt like a twisted kind of dance.

''It's ok, your safe, i'm here,'' but i had said something wrong and that wide faced inocence of your's had turned murderous. Watching the transition was just as mind boggiling as watching you peel away your own layers to reveal Sephiroth beneath. Your eye's narrowed to snake like slits, your shoulders hunched making you look alot more bigger and threatening and then you lunged forward.

I stepped back, just missing the sloppy swing of your fists. Nearly tearing apart the whole house with your energy seemed to have drained you because next thing i knew you were on one knee, panting and trying to stay furious. I started forward, dropping to my own knee's as you swayed slightly with a world you didn't want to be in. I could tell that you were weakening by the way you let me steady you with a hand on your shoulder and an arm around the middle of your back.

Weather you meant to or not your whole body went slack and you leaned into me, panting like a wild animal that had gone too long without water.

''I'm sorry,'' i said without really knowing what i was apauligising for.

''Brother,'' you managed to gasp, sliping further onto the floor until i was holding the edge of your weight against my chest.

''Why?' You begged as if i had done this to you,' where's Loz, Yazoo, what's happened?''

You sounded like a child so i found myself struggling to answer your questions honestly instead of the watered down way i would of told one of the children.

''I don't really know for sure,' i began, my breath sturring some strands of your hair,' but i think it's safe to say the Life Stream has rejected you and you've ended up here, though i don't know why 2 years later. As far as i know your brother's are still....,''

''Dead,'' you whispered, sounding so far away. You started to shake hard enough to make the buckles on my comabts you wore rattle against the wooden floors so i tried to comfort you.

''It's going to be ok though, your here and i know what happened last time....it's wasn't your fault, we can fix this,'' i tried desperatly as Kadaj's muscles bunched tighter and tighter. In a burst of blind panic that gave you enough strength to knock me back across the room i found my back slamming into the wall and the wamrth of your body no longer against my own. Plaster cracked round my shoulder blades and i had been a fighter long enough not to feel suprsied at your sudden attack.

I knew what you were capable of Kadaj and so did everyone else, only i was stupid enough to still try and hold onto you. The only family i had ever really had yet with no relation but horrible memories to keep us bound together. And Him... Was that why i was doing this?

You seemed to be panting for a different reason now as if you had been injected with a strong hit of life. You didn't look at me until i started to try and pry myself out of the indent i had created around the wall and then your face was full of a bone deep fear. It was as if you thought i was going to fight you again but then i suppose you wouldn't realize how against the idea i had become. I wasn't sure i had it in me that first time i killed you and if you hadn't risked the lifes of all the one's i loved i probably would of left the world to it's fate but i knew i couldn't do it a second time. It was no longer a case of trying to save other's but how to save you.

As if you could read the end of my thoughts your eye's widened even more, an animal backed into a corner before you spotted the window stained with rain and a gail that rattled it's glass. You backed towards it, away from me and i reached my hand out to stall you as all the words lodged in my throat.

How to tell you, you couldn't leave here without making it seem as if i were imprisoning you? How to tell you, you were a danger to yourself and everyone around you while trying to convince you, you belonged in this world.

As it turned out i didn't get a chance to say a word because you no longer had the strength to fight and so you picked flight, breaking the window with a solid swing of your arm and jumping through the shards of glass that fell in spirals with the rain. I ran to the window to see how you would hit the ground, a dazed part of me truelly believing you would fly away but all i sore was darkness and an angry night as you disapeared into the eye of your own storm.

KADAJ'S POV-

As i ran i as fast as i could, a blur in the hurricane of all the things i didn't understand around me i remembered what Yazoo had told me once. We were sat watching that box thing with the moving pictures at it's heart, i forget what it's called since i only came across one once when we strolled through a block of hotel rooms after killing all the people inside. We were still looking for Mother, any sign of her exsistance and there was such a deep calling for her in my blood i had believed the snitch we had managed to threaten into telling us things from when he worked for the president. He had led us there and even though we found nothing the night outside was the same as the one i was running through now so we stayed there. We had dozens of rooms to pick from but we all stayed in the last one we had searched, not willing to face the night without each other.

Loz had colapsed against one of the beds, smelling like rain and dripping blood from the heel of his boots onto the carpet where his feet hung of the edge. I peeled of the suit of leather, now too un-comfortable to feel light against skin that burned with faliure. It was no wonder Mother wanted Him more than me when i couldn't even find her. Not like a true son at all.

The box in the corner was flickering, the screen going through the motions of scenes i had seen in the outside world and i found myself un-able to look away. My eye's aced with the need to sleep but i couldn't, not when a man flashed up in the corner of the thing, another man waving a gun at him so amiture it made Yazoo snicker.

TV! That's what it was, he told me so. Humans watch it to emuse themselfs when there is nothing left to do in the day. Then the man pulled the trigger and my eye's tracked the round blob of a bullet until it disapeared behind the curtain of the other man's shirt. I watched him drop to the floor, clutch his chest as blood spilled over the knuckles of his hand.

''If humans fuss about taking anothers life so much why do they do it then show others?'' I questioned, eye's narrowing on my brothers face. He smiled that little smile of his, the one that said he knew the answer just at the corner of his mouth.

''I know this,' he confirmed, taking my hand and pushing me onto the bed,' it is just pretend, an immutation of real life. I use real bullet's but they use fake.''

They're fake bullets so why do i feel like i'm bleeding out? Why brother, why is it the lie can hurt so much more than the truth?

I stopped, feeling as weak as the day i had died and recognised the tree's around me. The Forgotten City, sheilded from most of the storm as the eco of thunder seemed distant enough to pass of as a heart beat. I stumbled, my vistion flickering like the screen of that TV, disjointing one scene from the next.

I sore you smiling to a women who had hair down to her waste as i looked down at you both, two children at your side.

I sore my own hand reach up into a white sky and disintergrat into a million fibres.

I sore you so far away on the seat of your bike, could recall the smell of your blood on the air as it trickled down your cheek.

I felt Him shift inside of me, what i imagine women to feel like with their child kicking beneath their own skin. A slight flutter as all the dark corners in my mind pushed their way forward until i was blind. Your voice could do it and i wondered why. Why you had any affect on us at all? All i knew is that i hated you for it, as deeply as i hated myself. What made you so special?

I colapsed on the balls of my hands and knee's at the lip of the river, the very place i had taken those children to, the one's you had protected with your life even when i turned them against you. I threw everything at you Cloud, your own loved once, my brother's, before you made me throw myself. My own thoughts quited as i looked down at my own reflection, now damp enough to turn silver to deep grey and cause your cloth's to hang heavier. I was just thinking how the rain had almost washed all your scent out when the sound of a branch snapping sent me some place different. A place where my body reacted without having to think or feel, a place where i could hide and wake up later to see who i had killed while asleep. My body taught and ready i didn't even see the tree's, only the shadows inbetween. 


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4- THE DEVIL AND THE DETAILS

TIFFA'S POV-

We don't talk about it but after you'd died things had changed. Not just the settlement of peace that now seemed second nature, once again took for granted but the way we all went through our day's in silence. It was like a ripple affect in a pond, Cloud would sit and stare at nothing for hours on end then disapear when anyone tried to talk to him, then i would think about him far too much and realize i hadn't moved from the kitchen sink for 3 hours straight, which in turn made Marlene and Densil worry and beg to stay home from school, just to check if i had moved. Just to see if Cloud was back yet. Too scared to leave home in case they returned to a place they didn't recognise.

I remember the night Cloud came back, when the streets were covered in snow that had gathered between a day and a night and Shinra seemed to glisten under a clean layer of ice. I was sat up in bed, half out of it really as i tried to lean against the window to catch the moment Cloud would apear. It was so cold out and i wondered if he could feel it, or if he were just as frozen on the inside.

Then he was in the door way to my room, stood staring at me and right through me in that way he did when it was too confusing to focus. Snow was gathered on the tips of his boots, making the carpet wet and the end of his nose was a dusty pink. His eye lashes flickered and then he was peeling his cloths of, suddenly next to me, undressing me too. His hands were like ice but i leaned in for more, a heavier touch because he wasn't the only one too numb to feel.

Before we had just been friends, Cloud was my hero weather he wanted to be or not and it wasn't until it was too late did i realize why he hated it when i told him so. I had always loved him though, in any way i could and any way possible. The one thing i remember most was the smell as i barried my face between the curve of his shoulder and neck. He forced his way into my body, taking my breath away and as i breathed in, desperate to ground myself i smelt rain and berries. As if he had been wondering through a Vinyaurd. It made me smile even when i felt it coming to an end all too soon.

Cloud didn't move of me until i couldn't help but fall asleep and in the middle of the night he krept away like a theif. Not realizing the value of what he had stolen. He disapeared for long enough to make me more angry than worried because i was the one that watched Densil and Marlene miss him, i felt it as much as they did. But he was out there thinking of you, thinking of Him and even when he was around we were alway's the one's sharing him with you and your memory.

When he did come back he had changed again. The dark shades under his eye's from too many sleepless nights had faded, he no longer looked straight through us with a smile too soft to leave an impression on his lips. He began to try again and we never really spoke of what happened, seeming to distract ourself's with the children and the endless hours there were to fill now that the fighting had stopped.

When you came back i tried to tell myself i was angry because you were dangerous, to the fragile balance of our life's, to the children and the one's i loved. But i guess i'd be a liar to say that was all it was. Even though i never really had Cloud to begin with i didn't know if i was strong enough to see you take him away again. I would do anything to hold onto him, even if that meant convincing the other's to tare you both apart.

CLOUD'S POV-

After the weeks of your death i had 8 seconds of the day that were perfect, right as i was breaking through the skin of consiousness and my eye's were still running over the trace of my dreams. In those moments i had forgotten everything and the world was a different place to the one i had fallen asleep in. Then reality would settle in like a bolder sinking onto the ridge of my spine and i couldn't breath. The Stigma had crippled me but this feeling was eating me from the inside out.

I would look in the mirror and expect to see little whole's apearing on my skin from were the blunt emotions inside of me were coroding the only layers i had left. But the wholes were like the scars, never visible and i would take a steady hand, clutch onto my phone and tell myself i didn't need anyone. Least of all you.

As i feel the pulsing heat from the chain by my calf and the metal tank pressed against my chest i let myself remember all the times i usually couldn't bare to think of. But i was searching for you and aware that the sickening worry inside of me was what it must of felt like to Tiffa and the kids when ever i walked away, so i welcomed the distraction. My eye's darted over the landscape of Shinra's buildings and roads while straying over scenes that happened from years ago.

I remembered what it felt like to be a solidure, to be one of the best yet feel like i was at the bottom of the food chain all at once. I had started to gather good friends around me then like a protective armour, a second skin. They were people that always told me to keep up while pushing me forward just in case, people who took my hand and helped me up when the weight of the world sent me to my knee's. And then there was Sephiroth, the one that seemed to know just that little bit more, be just that little bit stronger.

Back then when everything was still safe and day's consisted of training and following orders Sephiroth was the one that questioned that safety. He was the one that challended me to train with him, having no troubles in sending me crashing to the ground and forbiding anyone to help me back up. This was his way of making me stronger, taking me under his wing simply by waiting in a quiet corner and watching my progress, tossing advice over his shoulder, advice that kept me alive. Seeing past the hero to the fear that festered beneath.

I was with him the way i couldn't be with anyone else because he would except nothing less and in situations like that, i guess you could say it was like adding fuel to a fire aleady burning bright as a star.

Just as i turned my bike onto the road that would lead me through the forrest to the Forgotten City i remembered what it felt like on the day i discovered why Sephiroth had picked me. He had said i was one of a kind once and the words had nestled right into the core of my heart until i realized what he had meant. I was one of a kind because he had made me that way, moulded me into the only man that was capable of stopping him, just for the challenge. And wasn't it oh so ironic how the villian had made me into the hero i had become. This knoledge coupled with the fact that Sephiroth's idea of a perfect world was a non-exsistent one was the final lesson i needed to be able to kill him.

I didn't jump when i heared that light- as- sugar voice in my head, saw the tree's fading away around me as it had done the first time i had set out to find you.

''Cloud,'' she called and my name echoed of the white nonixstance around me.

''Feels like dejavue,'' i muttered, trying to keep my eye's open. She giggled and though inside hurt there was something soothing about being in this place again.

''Where's mother?'' I jumped as i heared your voice, desperate and wanting. I looked around for you but all i sore was a blankness that pained me to think about.

''Kadaj is here?''

''No but he's close.''

''Then....How can i hear him?''

''How can you hear me Cloud?'' She countered, another giggle bubbling from her lips.

''I...,'' i didn't know, how did you talk to a dead girl, how did you find a man that had once been dead too.

''Can he hear me?'' I questioned.

''I think he's a little too upset right now Cloud, i think you'd better hurry.''

I could feel life drawing back in, my lungs filling with a colder air and the smell of the forrest seeping back. Not for the first time i could feel you as if you were inside of me.

Once i pulled up along side the river i suddenly understood why i had needed to hurry, heared you calling out to your mother again. My heart seemed to drop to the bottom of my feet as i soaked in the image of you on your knee's, silver head tilted back, eye's closed to the sky you had fell from with a deep red shadow pushing a gold cuff into your throat. You spread your arms like they were wings, the black fabric of my jumper hanging from you with the weight of the rain caught in it's stitches.

I had started towards you without even realizing i had grinded my palm against the throttle. Before i skidded to a hault that made the tires of the bike churn sideways in the mud you had looked up and your eye's met mine, that silk texture of creamy green flashing in streaks of fear. Vincent was ready to kill you and you had looked as peaceful as a napping child yet i had arrived to save you and you turned to me terrified. Were you scared of me? Scared of living so much the thought of me saving you sent you into a meltdown.

I slamed on the brakes, Vincent drawing back his cloak and slowly easing the gold blade of his cuffed forearm away from your neck. From here i could see the red marks that mottled the skin of your throat and if it had been anyone but Vincent i would of hated him for it. But we both knew you were more than a child on your knee's, we'd both seen what lay beneath that desperate inoccence.

''Stop Vincent,'' I reached you in two large steps, standing between you as a wall that refused to be knocked down. And he listened to me, standing down and nodding his head, that quiet way of his making me feel far calmer than i should. Vincent wasn't the type to ignore me and try to kill you anyway out of blind fear, we knew each other well enough to wait for a reason.

''Let me explain,'' i began, ignoring the sight of my own breath curling in front of me. The long black strokes of his hair were specked with drops of rain and the shine of his eye's were a dark crimson. I wanted to ask him to take of his red cloak and throw it around your shoulders but i knew in his eye's you didn't deserve that much.

''The Life Stream brought him back.''

''I had already guessed as much,'' he replied calmly.

''I'm taking care of him, i have to,'' i frowned at my own fading voice.

''Are you sure about this Cloud?'' Vincent stared long and hard into my eye's.

''Yes,' i replied, and i was.

''Then i am sorry i attacked him, for thinking the worst. Good luck Cloud.''

And then he was gone, molding back into the shadows and leaving the rest un-said. I turned back to face you and could of kicked myself for taking too long even though it would of taken a lot longer to explain to anyone else. You had colapsed in the shallow edge of the river where thin layers of ice had began to grow on it's surface. I knelt and scooped you into my arms, always shocked by how light you were when pulled close to my chest. Your lips were a pale blue and your hair had began to clump together in wet tendrils. I had never seen your skin look so ashen so i climbed onto my bike, tucking you into me with your legs on eather side of mine and your head resting on the bed of my shoulder. Caught in the cage of my arms and the tank that curved against your back i started the engine, still able to hear the thunder of your heart that beat just as fast as my own.

''Oh and Cloud,' Vincent had stepped into the clearing from the tree's once more before i could turn onto the path that would lead us back to Shinra. I stopped, putting my foot down to steady the bike.

''He stepped into my blade,'' was all Vincent said and all of a sudden it felt like the gerny back home was too far to make.

RENO'S POV-

''Well...would you look at that,'' i gaped right up through three stories to the plastic cover over the whole in the attack.

''Cloud been playing Toss The Orphans to keep himself in shape?' I joked,' tell him next time he should really do that outside.''

Tiffa rolled her eye's at me and Rude's only comment was a quiet snicker he managed to pass of as a coif.

''Thanks for coming to help, we'll do a whole each. If we nail some wood over them atleast the children won't be in danger of falling,'' Tiffa began to tie her hair back with an elastic. I eyed the hammor, nails and planks of wood she had stacked against the wall.

''Where's Cloud, isn't this his orphanage?'' I raised my eye brow at her.

''Cloud's away on buisness, he would of helped if he could.''

I would of almost beileved that if the bitterness in Tiffa's tone hadn't risen high on the lie.

''Right and that buisness wouldn't happen to have anything to do with what made these wholes now would it?''

Tiffa looked stunned before she re-arranged that pretty little mask of her's. The one she used on occastions where her and Cloud had just had a little marital tiff or Densil had been caught skipping classes. What could i say, i wasn't as stupid as i looked. I ran my hand through my own stream of firey spikes, watching as some strands spilled back into my eye's while Tiffa tried to think up a good lie. She was as bad as Cloud at lying but it was funny enough to watch.

Rude shifted by the side of me, un-comfortable silences always made him ansy but he was good to go until he started shifting the shades on his face, a clear indicator that he was ready to go. It was still weird to me that i had been working with the big guy long enough to know what every shift of his body meant and i breifly wondered if that is what it felt like to know someone down to the core, or if i was just a really observant fighter.

Tiffa finally sighed, her shoulders sagging and i perked up at the clear sign of a white flag waving. But the look on her face was not the one i wanted, serious Tiffa really didn't have the same cute appeal as playful Tiffa. Something was wrong, i could tell in the way swallowed more times than she reached for breath.

''Cloud's with Kadaj, he was the one that made the wholes when he fell through the ceiling after the Life Stream refused him. I haven't seen either of them since yesterday and the last i heared from Cloud was when he phoned me in the middle of the night telling me to come here and look after the children while he went out to hunt for Kadaj, who had run of in the middle of the storm,'' she said all this quick and painless, like ripping of a band aid that would probably take your top layer of skin with it.

''Oh,'' was all i could say as Rude began to shift his sun glasses beside me. 


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5- THE FINEST LINE

In the darkness they walked on the finest line like two trapeze artests that prayed to make it to the very end. And like a tunnel that end had a light they both strived towards. But if one of them took a step too quickly, if one of them jarred that fragile rope they could both go falling into the casum bellow.

Cloud could sence Kadaj was behind him and he felt the destiny of leading him forward like a sharp stitch in his side. What if his step faultered, what if Kadaj fell and he didn't notice in time to save him? But they carried on walking towards the light and tried to ignore the spider web strands breaking beneath their feet.

It was hard to tell who was seeing what because the images looked so alien to the both of them. A patter of faces going by at the speed of rain fall and the sound of voices all merging together to creat a dizzying hush of whispers.

They sore themselves in the people they had cared for, in different spaces of time. Cloud struggling to his knee's, beaten and happy then stood at the bace of a sword looking out on old ruins that crumpled like the thoughts inside of him. Kadaj reaching out and holding his hand just so, marveling at the way it looked like he was cradling the moon in his palm, hanging of his brother's shoulders when failure was pressing down too heavy to bare.

''Why are you binding me to him?'' Cloud questioned then baffled at the way one thought had echoed out loud. The rope beneath them trembled.

''My my, you boy's. Always asking questions only you yourselves can answer,'' that girls voice, the same one he had once mistaken for his own mother seemed to resonate around them.

''I don't have the answers,'' Cloud replied and he wondered who he was talking to, her or Kadaj.

''No one does Cloud and yet still you ask.''

''Can't you...can't you just tell me why, why he's here, why now. I know you know that much.''

The girl giggled,''you never learn Cloud, maybe it's time to start. We all deserve second chances, don't you think.''

Cloud was about to reply before he noticed Kadaj hadn't said a word. He froze, managing to turn without falling on the thin balance he walked. He soon realized why. The silver line had broke and though they had not fallen a large black space stretched inbetween them, too big to cross over.

Cloud looked up at the man, wondering how they could be in the thickest, most suphocating mess togther yet be so far apart. Then Kadaj stepped of the end of the line and Cloud watched his decent into shadows that swallowed him whole, until the smallest glow of his silver head faded and the space was empty once more.

CLOUD'S POV-

I woke up on a bed of hard floors, my skin feeling too tight around my bones, lying beside your still sleeping form. I had decided to stop in the nearest hotel because i was a coward and too tiered to face Tiffa who would look at you in my arms, pale and wilting then give me that look that said ' i told you so.'

I had pealed my cloths of your body, ignoring the loud slap as they hit the floor and made a puddle. When i looked down at you i noticed the faintest scar on your chest, the one i had given you and covered you up before i could reach out and touch it.

There was only one bed so i let you sprawl out on it but really i could of fitted on there too by the way you curled in on yourself like a snail.

I wondered which dream that had been, mine or yours as i picked myself up and ran a hand through damp hair. I looked at you, really looked at you since the first time you had been back. Taking in the translucent patches of skin under your chin and on your wrist where blue veins crossed like train tracks, the sharp little half moons of your finger nails that seemed just as pearly as your teeth, right down to the small defined muscles of your biceps and chest. Your nose curved like a button, your lips shaped like wings and your eye brows were faint enough not to notice but you had his eye's. You always have and that was enough to brush aside anything that made you You.

I tip toed around you as silent as snow, pulling my shirt back on and trying to fing my goggles but you still woke with a start and i wondered if you had been falling from the thread of my dream ever since. You turned your head to me, hair mused but falling from the tangles within it's own silkiness, eye's smeared with sleep and i watched you brake out of your own 8 seconds of peace before reality got to you.

''Are you going to attack me again?'' I asked as i turned away because as i said i was a coward and seeing that broken look come over your face had the power to split me in two.

''No,'' you croaked, defencless and washed out. I wish i could show this side of you to the whole world, the side of you that looked like a rabbit insnarled in a human trap.

''Then i thought we could go back to the orphanage, you could meet the children.'' You could stay.

When you didn't say anything i asked if you were hungry, you nodded and when i turned around you were stood in front of me as naked as the day you were created. You were looking around the room, bewildered and then your eye's caught on the tv. You walked over to it, pressed all the button until it flashed on and i counted all the muscles in your back that seemed to flow like a wave beneath your skin.

My eye's turned to the screen, a child who was clutching onto the hand of what apeared to be her parent, her other hand fisted a teddy bare. Then you raised your own hand, curled your fingers until they made the shape of a gun and pointed it at her.

''Bang,'' you whispered, pulling the invisible trigger and as if the girl on tv had felt it, she burst into tears.

''You have to promise not to hurt anyone Kadaj,'' i said quietly as we stood by the side of my bike. You were staring at it like you'd never seen one before and you nodded your head briefly, giving me nothing to go on. I Climbed onto it and started the engine, realized you weren't moving i turned to you.

''This is the only way i can take you home,'' i sighed, the past couple of day's making me impatient.

''Home,'' you rolled the word around your mouth, feeling it's weight, tasting it like one would do to the name of a lover. With a deep tiered sigh you nodded your head and i felt your hips against my back and the strength of your arms around my waiste.

''Hold on,'' i said, and wondered if you even knew how.

By the time we had walked from the garrage to the front door i had breifed you on everything i could from the way the children were curious to see you to where the toilet was. I forgot however to mention Tiffa.

She was stood near the front door, hip against the kitchen counter because she had been ready since the moment she heared the rumbled of my bike coming up the road. She had her game face on, the one that said she was weary yet waiting for me to make it ok. I stood to the side so you could see each other and studied your face for the few seconds it ran over the room. There was no emotion there, only a slight curiosity behind the dead glaze of your eye's. In the distance i could hear the happy babble of children who were exsited to be free of school for the day.

You started forward, your head tilted slightly to the side with your hair hiding half your face, running your hand along the wall and looking slightly un-hinged. You moved like a panther despite the tention in your frame, all slick moves and un-hindered grace. For a moment the room was filled with the soft hiss of your fingers against wall paper.

''Kadaj, you remember Tiffa, my friend?'' I ignored the way Tiffa's lip's seemed to tighten at the edges.

''I don't care about the girl your fucking brother, i care about cloths. These ones are wet,'' and just like that you had clung onto the corner of the door, swinging your whole body around it and making your way down the hall. Tiffa and i both seemed to be dumb founded for a second before she turned to me.

''Yes Cloud, why don't you go and tend to your brother while the other members of your family that didn't try and kill you wait on the side lines until you notice us again.''

The door slamming brought the children running to me, clutching at my trousers and tugging at my hands. That's where you found me moments later, trying to wade my way from the kitchen to the play room with dozens of little fingers and hands caughts in the folds of my trousers.

You were like a shadow, stepping forward in another set of my cloths. My black combats too big, sagging down to expose the bones of your hip and my knitted body warmer hanging from your chest like wet hair. You crossed your bare arms then un-crossed them, green eye's the shade of a marble running over each one of the childrens' faces. I watched your confusion apear across your face and leave you looking open, not as insane and bitter as you had been before. I wondered if the fluxuation of your mood swings was because of your age or your genetics. Were you born a psycotic killer or simply made that way?

I didn't know what to do with myself and more importantly what to do with you. As i flipped my mobile open and scanned the 17 missed calls on the screen, from everyone of my friends that already knew about your exsistance by word of mouth the children all turned their heads and fell silent. I watched you tilt your slete grey head and examine every little face that looked up at you then felt the stiff chill of fear creep in around the corners of the kitchen.

All at once the children stepped back, as if shoved aside by the vibrant green of your eye's. They scrambled behind me as the familiarty of your face set in and they remembered you, what you had done. The man that had nearly distroyed the whole planet, standing in the middle of their home looking more emused by the second.

At that moment Hansel teetered past, still un-steady on the thin muscles of his legs with a snadwich clutched in his hand. He went to side step Kadaj, having not really noticed him in his haste to get to me, bright eye's holding mine to them. And that's when you reached out and snatched the sandwich from his grasp, bitting into it with a hunger like that of a ravenous dog. By the time Hansel turned to you you had already eaten to the crust and you lifted those mako green eye's to stare one another down.

''That was mine,'' Hansel stated as my lips broke apart to speak.

''Now it's mine,'' you replied, a nasty tint only children usually managed to slip beneath their words.

''Just because your an angel doesn't mean you can take things that don't belong to you,'' the blonde headed orphan replied and i held my breath.

''Then good thing i'm no angel,''your lips twisted into a curved smirk and i realized you hadn't changed, not one bit.


End file.
